Long used to irregular service, missing trains and outages and shortages of every conceivable kind, tens of thousands of Berlin commuters failed to notice that they were the innocent victims of a vicious left-wing extremist arson attack yesterday.

Huge sections of the Berlin S-Bahn system (some here call it the Stress-Bahn) were disrupted on Monday after a left-wing group set a fire at the Ostkreuz station that caused utter chaos, as usual. In a communiqué issued by the group, they expressed their hope that the attack would be a valuable contribution to the valiant fight against nuclear power (in other countries I assume, as Germany has already capitulated here), militarism and racism, although not necessarily in that order.

“This is absoulutely shocking,” one stunned commuter noted. “I should have known something was up when I actually made it to work thirty minutes earlier than usual. The terrorist bastards.”

Police in Berlin have recently made some progress in fighting left-wing extremism, with the number of arson attacks on cars attributed to anarchists down to 54 in 2010 from 145 a year earlier.